Walter Mitty imagines life as Aleister Crowley, or some stupid crikey

If I hadn’t made a commitment to writing something here every day, I’d probably be doing something else right now — accompanying the sounds of the neighbors fucking with a serenade of ninth chord-based riffs, funky-butt bass pops and other musical cliches sourced from my half-remembered arsenal of vintage porno-soundtrack grooves, perhaps. Or maybe I’d be dressing up like a scantily clad goat god/satyr fueled by shitty goth records and clove cigarettes and warm Red Bull, and I’d head out to the places where my imaginary entourage of nymphets congregates. It is a motherfucking big-ass full moon tonight, after all.

But, sadly, no. I am alone, in the corner of a coffeehouse, typing, sipping some non-alcoholic lemonade concoction, watching people walk by who I most likely will never carry any kind of a conversation with. It is a cool night for July. Apparently, most of the imbeciles in town are elsewhere, strange for a full moon. They’re probably all huddled together somewhere else, jizzing over each other as they read banal couplets and turgid prose, too artsy to engage in the drunken limericks of my sodden youth. Most of the people here? Studying for something. Quietly studying for some kind of stability while a full moon hangs in the sky.

Innocuous techno burbles in the background. To my ears, that’s the perfect coffeehouse music, with its cold, clinical precision, hyperactive percussion and washes of choral-like sounds. Better that that Sirius Buttrock Favorites As Selected by Some Tattooed Douche Who Ran a Stripper Bar Just Off Sunset Boulevard Circa 1987 channel. In fact, this being Bastille Day, the only thing I’d like more is something shlocky and French to go with this full moon.

I’ve been such an anxiety-permeated dog lately. Dunno why, really; it’s just this baseline of anxious background noise that surges and wanes in intensity. I’ve been feeling slightly more alone and out of sync with the rest of humanity, too — not uncomfortably so, but just like I’m being pulled back into the weird-loner status I thought I had escaped.

And then, I look at all these beautiful women floating around me, not like some kind of perv does, but with that muscle memory of hugging them but with a sighing regret that that sweet and fruitful part of my life may be over with, and I can accept that. Time for chess with the other old men in the park, perhaps, or arguments with trees.

Jeebus. What the hell am I on about? I think it’s time to bid adieu for the night, go home, crank up the white noise sound app on the phone to drown out the grunts and groans from across the way, and maybe play some bluesy shit on my guitar until the eyelids get heavy.